In just the last two weeks, Microsoft Windows users have been deluged with serious malware warnings as a bumper Patch Tuesday gave way to multiple U.S. government warnings. This is not the time to even consider dropping ongoing security support, but for hundreds of millions of users, there may soon be little choice.
We’re talking Windows 10 end of life, of course, which hits next October, and the dire situation with hundreds of millions of Windows users holding out from upgrading to Windows 11, either because they don’t want to or because their hardware does not meet Microsoft’s strict security hurdles to make the leap.
The question on many users’ minds has been whether these security restrictions will be relaxed as deadline-day approaches, to push millions more over the line. Or perhaps any kind of free extension to give users more time, quite apart from whatever expensive paid-for options Microsoft also chooses to introduce.
Unfortunately, for any Windows 10 users hoping for such changes last month brought more bad news over and above Patch Tuesday. Microsoft dashed hopes by shutting down the well-publicized “/product server” workaround that tricked the Windows setup process into completely ignoring its usual hardware tests.
At the time, I commented on Forbes that “Microsoft’s new workaround decision seems to be a confirmation of its intent, maintaining its firm stance where Windows 11 hardware is confirmed… which is bad news for the 70% of all Windows users staring down the barrel of October 2025.”
XDA Developers has now suggested that “using unsupported hardware on Windows 11 is only going to get more miserable,” and their reasoning—if right—should be another warning for Windows 10 holdouts that Microsoft is unlikely to relent.
There is the obvious benefit for Microsoft, the site says, in “forcing people who want to continue to get official support to hop to Windows 11 [which] would drive PC sales,” but “there’s another layer that’s in play here.”
This “other play” is AI—what else. “Microsoft is going all-in on its AI strategy, creating what’s called ‘Copilot+ PCs’ that have enhanced AI tools that utilize a system’s NPU. Right now, there aren’t too many Copilot+ PCs out there, but give the company just over a year and there should be a lot more.”
A few hundred million PC upgrades will equate to a serious increase in the number of Copilot + PCs knocking around, so the theory goes, and it’s hard to argue the logic. Especially when the tidy, monthly revenues from AI subs come into view.
Unplanned though it likely is, there’s certainly something mightily convenient about a generational shift in the requirement for PC hardware coinciding with a separate, generational shift in recurring AI revenues—rather like your connecting flights arriving and connecting from adjacent gates.
Two other stories in the last week provide some neat, additional context. First is the resurgence of Recall. This constant stream of screenshots of everything done on your PC—good and bad—should enable an AI engine to summon up anything through a simple prompt. Unsurprisingly, it was labeled a privacy nightmare when it was first mooted. Now with some more security protections and opt-outs and even (possibly) an option to uninstall, it’s coming back—at least for more advanced users to test.
The second variation on a theme is the new potential for Windows 11 to index all video and audio files stored on a PC to enable intelligent searching. You can see where all this is going. The very nature of your PC will shift to becoming your de facto memory for everything, everywhere, with Microsoft’s AI overseeing the lot. Not a good time for holdouts to be sticking to their ancient, end-of-life OS.
All told, it promises to be an interesting 13-months for the Windows ecosystem as all this plays out, including the take-up of the new AI offerings—especially Recall—and the extent to which Windows 11 upgrades manage to bridge the vast current gap.
“Whatever happens,” XDA Developers warns the 70% of Windows users that have yet to upgrade, “there’s a good chance that using Windows 11 on incompatible hardware is only going to get more miserable from here on out.”
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